Introduction of C Language

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What is C language?

C is general-purpose procedural programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie at AT&T’s Bell laboratories in 1972 to develop the UNIX operating system. It is a high-level programming language. However, often referred as a middle-level programming language; since it provides rich support to low-level programming language constructs.

The development of C began, to re-implement the UNIX operating system. It is such a powerful language that most of the popular operating systems are completely or partially written in C. It is mostly used for the development of Operating systems, Kernels, Compilers, Device drivers, embedded systems, RDBMS packages etc. and essentially all UNIX application programs have been written in C. C has now become a widely used professional language for various reasons:

• Easy to learn
• Structured language
• It produces efficient  programs
• It can handle low level activities
• It can be complied on a variety of computer platforms

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Why C language is so important?

Since, C is also called as the mother of all programming languages. Because most of the modern computer programming languages directly or indirectly influenced from C (such as C++, Java, C#, PHP, Perl, and JavaScript etc.)

Worth to know about C language:

• Oracle is written in C
• Core libraries of android are written in C
• MySQL is written in C
• Almost every device driver is written in C
• Major part of web browser is written in C
• UNIX operating system is developed in C
• C is the world's most popular programming language

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C language as a student point of view:

• C is important to build programming skills
• C covers basics features of all programming languages like control statements, Function, Array, structure, string etc.
• C is helpful in campus recruitment process since most of the question asked from C languages.

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History of C Programming: 

In late 1960s Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie developed, a language called B. Earlier version of UNIX uses B programming language. It inherits many of its features from BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language).

Later in the early 1970s need for a portable operating system and programming language originated. Rather developing programs and operating system for a particular machine. The need of a portable operating system came in existence. This was the period when development of C programming language started.

During 1969 to 1972, Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories developed C, located in the USA. In 1972, the first release of C programming got officially public. C inherited many features from ALGOL, BCPL and B. It is such a powerful language that UNIX operating system is almost completely written in C.

In 1978, it gained huge popularity from the Bell laboratories to the heart of every programmer. Brain Kernighan along with Dennis Ritchie published the first book on C "The C Programming Language". The book is popularly also known as "K&R C book”.

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C Standards: 

The massive popularity of C programming headed development of its versions. However, every version was similar to the original but often incompatible. To assure the standard of C in every version, American National Standards Institute (ANSI) initiated work on C standards.

In 1989, ANSI sets base for all implementations of C compilers and published the first standard of C. The first C standard is popularly known as C89. The current C standard is commonly referred as C18 (previously known as C17) the most recent standard for the C programming language, published in June 2018. C18 will be superseded by C2x.

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